Ir

‘Ir‘, translated as ‘to go‘, is a very important verb in Spanish as it is in English.

It is another one of those verbs that has a large number of irregularities in its formation with only the future and conditional tenses following a regular pattern which does mean, unfortunately, that ‘ir‘ will require some memorization and learning to allow confident use.

‘Ir’ is normally followed by ‘a’, the Spanish equivalent of the English ‘directional’ to; for example in English we say; ‘I am going to the station‘. In Spanish this would be ‘Voy a la estación‘

Again, as in English, ‘ir’ is used when we want to talk about an event that is going to happen – ‘We are going to eat‘, would be ‘Vamos a comer‘

Here are the conjugations of the verb ‘ir’ in the present tense.
(For a complete, and printable, conjugation sheet, showing all the irregular parts of ‘ir’ click here or on the image above)

Yo voy

I go

Tú vas

You go (familiar)(sing.)

Él va

He goes

Ella va

She goes

Nosotros vamos

We go

Vosotros vais

You go (polite)(plur.)

Ellos van

They go

Note: Many students become confused with the issue of whether or not they should use the personal prefix; yo, tú, es…etc when writing or speaking in Spanish. The answer to this will depend upon your location and your course material. In European Spanish these prefixes (pronouns) are normally dropped and only used when ambiguity needs to be avoided; whereas in Latin American Spanish the use of the pronouns is much more widely used.